


take just a little bit of a time

by defcontwo



Category: Batman (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Sex Pollen, sex pollen more like unsexy pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I was thinking post patrol sex. You in?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	take just a little bit of a time

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [故事碎片依然继续 / take just a little bit of a time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186095) by [blurryyou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurryyou/pseuds/blurryyou)



This is one way it starts: 

A rooftop, a closed case and an adrenaline high. Tim, standing across from him in head to toe kevlar and leather and there is something honed and fierce about his cowl, about the way the nose sharpens, makes him look like a bird of prey but the whole effect is ruined right now by the bright grin, spread wide, and the flush in his cheeks and the way Tim can't quite stay still, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. 

"You're making me tired just looking at you, Red," Jason says but he's grinning just as much, can feel the energy thrumming beneath his skin. It's one of _those_ nights. One of the good ones, when nothing goes according to plan, the line from A to B to C zigs and zags and zips but they get it done anyways, and that moment, the rush of victory, it's got to be the best kind of high in the world. 

Well, one of the best. 

"This is usually the part where Batgirl and Black Bat bully me into post patrol rooftop tag," Tim says and Jason snorts, reflexively, because man, is he so full of shit. Tim loves rooftop tag just as much as the girls do, even when he loses -- and he does usually lose, a tag-team of two against one and the girls chasing him with bright laughter and battle cries all the way across the city but the girls are out of town, a job halfway across the country with Supergirl, and so it is just them and open space and however much of the night they have left, opportunities that contain multitudes. 

"But I was thinking," Tim says, drawing it out as if Jason doesn't know where this is going, "post patrol sex. You in?" 

_You in?_ Tim asks, a serious offer couched in bright smiles and a light voice. 

Tim was something else tonight, something great and terrible and frighteningly competent, a hard punch knocking out a guy three times his weight that got Jason's blood rushing in all the wrong directions, and Jason's answer, of course, is yes. 

Or, this: 

Tim, sprawled out next to him on the bed, paperwork fanned out around him as they fight through case files. 

Jason groans, blinking down as he re-starts the same sentence for the fifth time. The words are starting to swim together, black bleeding into white and they've been at this too long, they've officially crossed over the line into the point where any work they do isn't gonna be worth jackshit. 

"We need to take a fucking break." 

Tim hums. "Coffee or sex?" 

Tim's got his hair tied back but it's falling out of the elastic, falling around his face in disarray and he's got bags under his eyes, face pale and skin bruised blue from not nearly enough sleep, and somehow, he's still the most attractive thing Jason's ever seen. 

"Sex and then coffee?" 

Tim cracks a grin, swinging a leg over Jason's, settling into his lap, papers crunching and wrinkling beneath them. "Works for me." 

Or, there's this: 

Tim, all five foot seven inches of him, leaning against the jamb to Jason's front door, neat lines and finely pressed wool and an impish grin, saying, "I spent about an hour staring out my office window thinking about how I'd like to fuck you before I gave up and admitted that the paperwork defeated me." 

Jason, crossing his arms over his chest and staring back, a long day in an even longer week and there's weariness tearing at the edges of his skin but still, a fondness unfurling in his chest that he doesn't stomp on, press down, he's getting used to it these days -- it's a comfort, now, not as scary as it used to be. 

"That a proposition, Red?" 

Tim lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "If you want it to be." 

Jason closes his eyes and sees vacant stares, blood on the walls, the ghosts of his latest case and his stomach turns, and he blows out a breath, feels small and weighted down as he says, "Not today, Red." 

Tim smiles a little half smile and comes through the door anyways, tugging at his tie and toeing off his shoes. "Worth a shot. How do you feel about take out for dinner? I've been craving tandoori chicken all week." 

"You buyin', rich boy?" 

"Do I look like a cheap date to you?" Tim says, holding out his hands as if to put his fancy ass suit on display and it's a clever feint, one that most people buy but Jason knows better, knows that Tim would trade the wool for plaid and worn out jeans any day of the week, knows that the suit is a uniform and one that he likes far less than the leather and kevlar, so he makes a show of it, purses his lips and gives Tim an exaggerated up and down before shrugging and Tim shakes his head but laughs anyways, mutters a quick _fuck you_ out of habit more than anything else before tugging down the stack of take out menus from the shelf. 

"So, tandoori chicken, yes or no?" 

"Yeah, yeah, make sure to order some samosas too, you forgot last time." 

Jason hands him the phone to make the call and Tim presses an absent kiss to Jason's shoulder, a quick press of warmth and then he's moved away, walking and talking and making hand gestures like he always does even though whoever's on the other side can't see him anyways and Jason is still tired and still -- still something fragile and shaken, like he's gonna need a full night's sleep and so much Jane Austen to be okay again but now, in this moment, everything seems that much more manageable. 

But this -- this is a way that it never, _ever_ goes: 

Tim, an unnatural flush high in his pale cheeks, cowl abandoned on the floor, babbling a jumbled mess of words, things that he's never said, as he leans up to try and kiss Jason, nimble fingers trying to make quick work of Jason's kevlar suit. He looks like Tim and he sounds like Tim but he is not a Tim that Jason knows -- writhing and insistent and wholly out of control and it's about as far away from their usual fare that Jason's getting whiplash just from wrapping his mind around it. 

There is a lurching in his stomach, like he's going to be sick, and his skin feels stretched too tight and prickly all over and he is maybe a couple of seconds from letting the panic take over but Jason shoves it over and forces it down, taking a deep, shaky breath as he straightens, pulls himself together. 

Fucking Ivy, _fuck fuck_. 

"Tim," Jason starts, suddenly stubbornly grateful for his helmet, "Tim, did you breathe it in or was it an injection, do you need to be quarantined?" 

Tim shakes his head, pupils blown wide, eyes unseeing. "Injection -- it's okay, though, Jay, it's okay, it feels _so good_ , Jay, you've gotta…" 

What Jason was supposed to do, he guesses he'll never know and for now -- for now, he thinks he can live without, Tim falling backwards into the couch from the weight of the punch, knocked clean out. 

For a few minutes, Jason just stands and stares down at him, unseeing. He clenches and unclenches his fist. 

" _Fuck_ ," Jason says, with feeling. 

Shaking himself, Jason lifts Tim up from the couch, shifting him into a kitchen chair and securing him with zip tie restraints. It's not gonna be comfortable and he's gonna be sore as hell in the morning but it's better than risking him waking up and starting this whole thing over again. 

Bruce would have done this with a sedative but Jason doesn't like to have them around even though -- even though he should, really, because you never know but it always feels too much like his mother's eyes gone glassy and unseeing, like finding a needle in the trash the next day when he went to throw out an empty milk carton and digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands and wanting to be anywhere, anyone else. 

Ivy's injections take eight hours tops to work all the way through the system and Jason spends all eight of them drinking mug of tea after mug of tea, sitting square across from Tim at the kitchen table, watching his chest rise and fall in sleep. 

Every few hours, he'll let out a moan and it echoes in the stillness in the kitchens. 

Jason hates this, hates that there is something that can reach so far inside of someone like Tim, Tim who is so settled and constant and sure, and scoop him out and replace his sense of self with some unknowable creature. It scares him, maybe more than he'd ever like to admit even to himself because most days, most days he's still not too sure he's got his head screwed on right and he thinks if there's something like this, if it had been him, he thinks maybe it would have shattered him wide open into a million different disparate pieces. 

The minutes crawl by, a slow and steady aching, the sun rising and spilling light into the dimness of his kitchen. Finally, after what feels like a million years but could have been just a few scant hours, Tim stirs. 

"Ow….shit, what." 

Jason rubs a hand across dry, bloodshot eyes. "Tim?" 

"Why do I feel like something that's been scraped off the bottom of Lex Luthor's shoes?" 

"You don't remember?" 

Tim blinks and then shakes his head. "Shit. _Ivy_." 

"Got an uncontrollable urge to jump my bones?" Jason asks, grateful when his voice doesn't quite shake as much as he thinks it should've but he can see in the way Tim's eyes soften, a wry twist to his lips, that maybe he's not passing himself off as nonplussed as he'd like to. 

"No more than usual," Tim says. "Did you _punch me out_?" 

"Yep," Jason says. "You went down pretty hard." 

"From one punch?" Tim makes a face. "How embarrassing." 

"I won't tell anyone," Jason says, moving to get up from his chair and his bones ache and creak with the movement, sore from folding long limbs in place for hours on end and suddenly, he feels old, older than the stones and the dirt and the grease that hold this goddamn awful city together and every bit as weary. He pulls a knife from his boot, slicing the zip ties holding Tim in place and he waits a beat and then another but Tim does nothing, just breathes in and out, doing that meditation breathing shit that he and Bruce both believe in so much and Jason goes to move away but a hand reaches out to stop him. Tim's grip loosens, circling Jason's wrist lightly -- this is on purpose, Jason knows, action over words, the meaning implicit. 

"You okay?" 

Jason blows out a breath. A question with about half a dozen answers, none of them easy, but. "Yeah. I'm okay. You?" 

Tim slants him a sideways glance. "Yeah, I mean. Aside from the shiner, I'll live. Hey, Jay -- " 

"Don't," Jason interrupts. "Don't thank me." 

Tim huffs, giving Jason a pointed look that says pretty clearly, _don't be an idiot_. "I wasn't. I was gonna ask if you had any food in the fridge. I could eat a horse right now." 

"So fucking bossy," Jason gripes but it is entirely put upon, a cover up for the rush of relief, sharp and quick. "Maybe _you_ should start doing my grocery shopping since you're the one always eating me out of house and home." 

"What, and deprive you of your trips to the farmer's market that you pretend not to love as much as you do?" 

"Oh, bite me, Red." 

"Only if you ask nicely, Jay."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [like atlas, we bear our worlds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1326022) by [ephemeraltea (temporarily_obsessed)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarily_obsessed/pseuds/ephemeraltea)
  * [[Podfic] Take Just a Little Bit of a Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9090415) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




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